Reaper: The Demontouched Saga (Book 3) (3 page)

I walk around the compound, following the wall. Part of me wants to believe he is really a good guy in disguise, but the other part of me wants to beat the living shit out of him. The clues all add up and point directly at him.

Sending me to Duncan so he can kill me.

The bombs going off around the convention center.

Baldie and Pimp Hat trying to take me to see someone.

If Nal isn’t involved, someone is going well out of their way to make sure it looks like he is.

“You OK, Mitch?” Zeke says.

“I’m good. Just have a lot of shit on my mind.”

“It’s been a rough few weeks for you. Want to talk about it?”

“I’m just trying to piece together the attack downtown. Someone went well out of their way to set that up. Everything was way too precise. When the explosions went off in the convention center, it took only seconds for the bombs in the city to follow.”

“The demons want to enslave your kind. Many of them left Heaven the moment you were created.”

“I’ve heard the stories. Lucifer and all.”

“Yes, but he was only the first. There were thousands of others that left with him. He united them under the cause of destroying humanity. Lucifer meant to give God a reason why your kind was not to be worshiped.”

“Why worship us at all? The only thing we are good at is getting ourselves in trouble. Shit, most of the people didn’t even believe in him.”

“He loved all of his creations. He still does, even now.”

“Then why not end this mess? Get the rest of us out of here. Let the demons have this shit hole.”

“He made a promise, and he had to keep it. The demons promised a war in Heaven if he didn’t start the apocalypse.”

“So he settled for a war on earth. Fought by people who don’t care about him. That makes sense.”

“He doesn’t always make sense, but he continues to have faith in your kind. Especially in you.”

“Why me? What makes me so special? Last time I checked, I joined the other side.”

“Yet you fight for the right side. Most people would have given up a long time ago. Not only do you stand against the demons, you actively defy them. If God could, he would make hundreds more of you.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“I can understand that, but it’s true.”

“What about you? What do you think?”

“I think you are worth dieing for.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

Zeke puts his hand on my shoulder. “Agreed.”

“I need to get back downtown. Whoever did it may have left some clues behind. With any luck we can take down another demon before he does any more damage.”

“You aren’t in any condition to fight. And you know if you go back, you will have to fight.”

He is right, but I still have to get back there. Something big is going down and I may be able to stop it. “You going to stop me?”

“No,” he says. “I’m going to join you.”

“No confidence in me, eh?”

“I have plenty of that, but you need someone you can trust with you. Someone you won’t have to worry about keeping safe.”

“I won’t turn you down, that’s for sure. When do we leave?”

“As soon as I give you something,” he says. “A gift.”

“I’m not good with surprises. The last surprise gave me this.” I point to my arm.

He breaks off a branch from a small tree. “Put this in your mouth and bite down.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Just do it. And close your eyes.”

I put the branch in my mouth, closing my eyes as instructed. It doesn’t take long to understand why. I feel his hand on my arm heat flowing out of his fingertips. After a few seconds, I can only hope that the branch holds. I’ve burned my hand a few times when I worked in fast food, but I’d take that pain any day of the week.

A bright light penetrates my eyelids. I clinch my eye shut even more, hoping to keep the light from blinding me.

After nearly a minute, I feel relief as his touch changes from a searing heat to feeling like he had a cold towel on it. I loosen the grip on the branch and spit it out on the ground. “Am I good to open my eyes now?”

“You are,” he says.

My eyes immediately gravitate to my wounded arm. I remove the remnants of my sleeve expecting to see a nasty scar. Instead the arm looks normal. If you didn’t know that I was stabbed earlier that day, you wouldn’t think anything was odd.

“What did you do?”

“Some of us have the gift of healing. It doesn’t always work.” He twists my arm around to get a better look. “Seems like you got lucky.”

“I’ve been really lucky lately. I just hope nobody dies when that luck runs out.”

“People die, Mitch. You can’t stop that. The only thing you can do is to make sure you die of old age, or to a cause that is worth giving up your life for.”

It doesn’t change my thoughts. I’ve been really lucky so far. It is bound to run out. When it does, I just want to be alone. I can’t let someone else die for me.

“We should tell Uriel where we are headed,” he says. “She can be a worrier.”

- 4 -

The drive back downtown is abnormally quiet. I want to tell myself that it is normal, but the churning in my stomach tells me otherwise.

“What did you see when you were getting out of there?” Zeke says.

“Couldn’t make out anything with the darkness and the smoke. But I’m expecting to see some nasty shit when we get there. I heard a lot of screaming and gunshots early on. They got quieter as we got further away.”

“Maybe they were trying to get all the people to one spot.”

“Then explain how my path was clear. I would have been out of there if it wasn’t for that damn kid.”

“They knew you wouldn’t be trapped easily, yet they still drew you in. I know you believe otherwise, but this looks like Israfil’s handy work.”

“That’s even more far-fetched than Uriel’s story.” There is way too many pins that have to line up for that to be true. How the hell could one being, demon or not, know exactly what my moves would have been. One wrong turn, or if I had actually been an asshole and left the couple or just took the car and his plan is foiled.

“A little faith can go a long way, Mitch.”

“I have faith in you,” I say. “In humanity is another issue entirely.”

We are quiet the rest of the drive. I know he believes Nal is one of the good ones, but I need more proof. My gut is telling me I’ll find the truth out here, so it’s not worth arguing about any more.

He parks the car about a block from where I got my ass kicked. They didn’t focus much in this direction, so I figure it would probably be the best way in. It’s not like we have a load of options.

“Where to first?” he asks.

“I need to get the pack and the sword from my car. It’s not far from here.”

“Don’t think it’s being watched?”

“Probably is, but I have to take that chance. I don’t want to be caught without a way to kill one of them again.” If I had the sword here last night, the fight may have been different. I would have had a much better chance of walking away from it, anyways.

The area is in much worse shape than I expected. Chunks of debris are strewn throughout the streets, visible through a fine cloud of dust swirling through the air. We walk around blood that has pooled around the low spots in the roadway as we make our way down the street.

“Where are all the bodies?” I ask as we close in on my ride. Last night this place was a battleground. With the explosions and the gunfire, you would think there would be a few bodies around. It’s not like we have a government agency in charge of cleaning shit like this up anymore.

“I was thinking the same thing. We saved a few of the people, but there were already dozens of people we couldn’t help,” Zeke says. “Someone must have moved them.”

“But who would want to do that?” I ask while pulling my stuff out of the car.

“I don’t know, but it is clear someone has.”

“Let’s take a look around. Maybe we can find them.”

Zeke nods as he readies his bow. Some people may question his choice in weaponry, considering that guns aren’t that scarce. Where they see a lack of range and a distinct disadvantage in the power department, we see a huge advantage in the stealth department. When you use a gun, you get one shot before you lose your advantage. If you are lucky, that target is the key to the whole situation.

The bow, in comparison, is silent. Yeah, they make a noise when they loose an arrow, but you have to be close to the shot to hear it. If you chose your targets wisely, you could potentially take down whole groups of enemies without one sounding an alarm. If you find yourself in hostile territory, having one could just save your life.

The destruction gets worse as we close in on the convention center. I figured that there would be some heavy damage here, even without the other bombs, thanks to the rubble that was thrown around during the display. None of it would be odd if the damage was limited to the side closest to the center, but the damage is all around them.

“Looks like they had one set close,” Zeke says as he pokes his head into the minivan sized hole in the brick wall.

“It had to be pretty damn close to do something like that. Wouldn’t it?”

“And up off of the ground. Almost like someone was holding it.”

“Suicide bombers? Who would be stupid enough to do that?” I admit, that is not the smartest thing I have ever said. Suicide bombers were rampant during the last ten years though usually a clear trademark of radical Islam. Not the type of thing you would expect three years after the Rising.

“Perhaps, but I don’t think so.”

Up nearly three blocks ahead I notice four figures turning onto our street, but heading the opposite direction. “Looks like we have company. We should follow them, see what they are up to.” I pull my binoculars out of my bag and put the strap around my neck.

Zeke nods and takes off at a jog towards the figures. I pull out the sword and follow close behind. We follow them as they turn north another block ahead.

“Hold here.” Zeke puts his hand up to signal me to stop. “They are close.”

I peek around the corner and pull my binoculars to my eyes. The figures, four men, are all surrounding what looks like a body on the ground. While I see some blood on the surrounding ground, I can tell they are alive.

“What is the one in red holding?”

“It looks like Duncan’s orb.”

“I thought it might be,” Zeke says. “You might want to look away.”

His warning was a touch too late. I watch as a man in a long sleeve black shirt pulls out a switchblade and cuts the man’s throat on the ground. Blood shoots in the air from the wound for a few seconds before a man in a Blues jersey kicks the body over. The bleeding man twitches for a few long seconds before he comes to a stop. When he does a wisp of white smoke floats away from the body and into the orb.

“Did you see that?” I ask.

“They collected his soul,” he says. “We suspected that is why Duncan had all of those people caged up in the warehouse. You captured a few demon souls in the one you found, but he didn’t know if they would attract the souls of other beings.”

“Shitty way to get your answer.”

Zeke nods. “One we weren’t about to try ourselves.”

“You think that is the same orb?” I say. “That can’t be something they mass produced, can it?”

“I wish we knew. For now we have to assume they have a few of them.”

“Then we should go take that one from them.”

“Agreed.”

I pull down the binoculars and take a step around the corner. I’m about to charge at the group when I notice another set of people approaching the others. “Shit, don’t move.”

“What’s wrong?”

“More of them. At least eight.” I was confident facing down the four demons a moment ago, but I don’t think I can handle a dozen. Having an angel on my side gave me a better shot, but one that still leads to my death.

Putting the binoculars back to my eyes, I wish I could hear the conversation. From what I see, the two groups definitely know each other. They have broken into three smaller groups all clustered together except for the one in red. He is walking across the street, towards a man that walks into the open.

“That’s Rick!” I say.

“Nal’s guy?”

“It sounds impossible, but that’s definitely him.”

“Impossible? How?”

“I saw his body. Hard to survive a gunshot that blows a chunk of your brain out of your skull.” I shiver thinking about it. Rick was a fast draw. It was odd that he would be caught with his pants down like that.

“There has to be another explanation. There is no way someone could come back from a wound like that.”

“Not even an angel or demon?”

“An angel could, few things can kill us,” he says. “A demon could if it had to, but it isn’t as reliable and it takes longer.”

“How much longer?”

“Weeks. Months. Depends on its strength. They usually won’t bother healing the host.”

“I know they can heal others. Maybe Rick made a deal before he died.” This theory makes the most sense to me, for obvious reasons. I have my powers, and problems, thanks to a deal I made with one to heal my wife. Someone on their own deathbed would be a lot easier to convince than I was, and I was easy.

“That is a very rare trait for a demon. One they wouldn’t waste on someone so close to death already.”

“Could one have placed an illusion on him to make it look like he was dead?”

“You have watched too much TV. That kind of magic doesn’t exist.” Zeke laughs. “Perhaps the most logical explanation is that this person just looks like him. Wouldn’t be the only people that has happened to.”

“You might be right.” Something still seems off, but I know I saw his corpse.

We watch as they walk down the street in one group. As much as I want to follow them and take their orb, it just isn’t going to happen here.

“What do you think we should do next?”

“I say we head back to the hotel. Make sure I’m not seeing shit.”

“If it makes you feel better, we can go. So you know. You won’t see what you expect there.”